I wrote this post a few days ago in honour of my baby sister, Ossy a.k.a ‘Oz’ a.k.a ‘ORRRRRRRRR’ a.k.a *Insert name created solely to irritate said celebrant*,  who added another year to the number she’s already collected so far, on Thursday.

Thinking about her on her birthday made me remember a questionnaire I filled years ago, when Facebook first came out. I’m showing my dinosaur years but it was so long ago that Facebook was only available to university students and even then, only some schools were registered on the social networking site. Impossible to believe that now, isn’t it? This questionnaire was the forerunner of the many ‘Invade My Privacy’ challenges we see today. It was basically a list of questions you had to answer on your Facebook wall (lol, does anyone still write on walls?!) and then ask others to do the same, something like that.

I remember thinking a few days ago, that my answers to most of the questions: “When are you the happiest?”, “Name a friend you’d like to be stuck on a deserted island with” and so on, indeed almost all of my answers, I thought, would be different today.

All but one, I corrected.

One of the inquiries on the questionnaire asked, “What are you the proudest of?” And the answer was simple to me, even at 19. The answer was and still is, “My baby sister, Ossy.”

Thinking on it, it’s weird to have said that at the time because if you looked on the surface using the matrices with which the world judges us, you might have determined that there wasn’t much to be proud of in my sister then. At the time, Ossy was in secondary school and was struggling academically, she also appeared to be unclear as to the direction of her future or her own capacity. Yet, she has always been whom I’ve been the proudest of and perhaps this is why.

Ossy arrived in my life when I was almost 9 years old. There’s approximately a two-year difference between each of us, all five of us sisters and as the oldest, I’d been a first-born sister three times before Ossy came along. When I was 2, 4, 6…and then 9 with Ossy. I think all my sisters are responsible for shaping large chunks of my character. There are traits that were built into my character as an answering call to a need in each sister, a trait in me simply created to manage a gap or dearth in each sister. Empathy to address one sister’s vulnerability, boldness to deflect another’s brashness, patience to reach one who might walk slower than others. And this applies to them as well: There are bits of their characters that are open jigsaw pieces which only my weird characteristics can fit. I guess that’s what family is about, making room to accommodate broken and strange pieces to form a whole.

So Ossy came when I was 9 and it’s weird because this relationship was different. In many ways, still like the sister dynamic, but perhaps because I was older now a whole mature NINE, I really thought of Ossy as every bit my child as my mum’s baby. I remember large bits of her early years, the answering laugh on my lips every time she smiled at me in that impish way she would, the wrinkling of my heart when she was in pain or sad. Her first words (which was a boldly babbled “NONSENSE!” by the way) and her childhood cheekiness, she just delighted me totally and I adored her completely. We started school together with my first day away at boarding school coinciding with her first day at nursery and I do not think there was an experience more painful in my childhood existence. As a baby, Ossy was DESPERATE to go to school with all her older sisters. Every morning, she’d wake up as early as us and let the maid dress her in a rush, determined that maybe today, they’d let her join her sisters inside the hallowed gates of our Montessori.

…And every day she would return home in tears as the driver, maid and at least one security guard restrained her, yet again, from running into the school gates after her sisters. The week she was to finally start school, she arranged and rearranged her school clothes in excitement and I mourned being able to finally walk with her across those pearly gates of Montessori heaven.

As she grew, I saw the bond she shared with Ibiso, the absolute devotion of a baby sister and an older sister so close in age and I’d look at both of them proudly, as though I had made them. Lol. In fact, after Ibiso passed, I would see so many bits of her character in Ossy, it seemed like my baby sister had imbibed her whole. I suppose that’s what it is to share a heart with someone. I love my sisters and truly as a child I do not think I had any greater delight than finding ways to entertain them. I remember when we were on holiday from school, my mum would give us money to buy snacks; initially it was N5, then with the inflation of military rule, it quickly rose to N7 then N10. We weren’t one of those houses where things were shared by age, everyone got an equal N10. So instead of buying our individual, favourite snacks, I somehow convinced my sisters to pool funds together so we could get a mix of things for N50. Tough but those rugrats eventually complied and I devised something I’d simply labelled ‘CARNIVAL’. For ‘CARNIVAL’, I’d plan, along with my faithful sidekick Anita, a series of games to be played with prizes- being our N50 snacks- to be won. After the first ‘CARNIVAL’, my sisters couldn’t wait to hand me their Ten Nairas! In fact, they ended up telling all their friends, who would then show up at our house for said ‘CARNIVAL’…without the requisite Ten Nairas, mind you. Highly annoying. Lol.

In many ways, my relationship with Ossy and perhaps on some level all my sisters has been as much sisterly as it has been motherly. A lot of that must do with how my mum raised me. I think she was raised with the understanding that one child had to be sacrificed. Lol. Like one child had to be an adult in the end and the oldest is logically, the scapegoat. So, as a child I lowkey hated birthday parties and all other events because no matter how much fun I was having, I was programmed to keep an eye out unconsciously for where all FOUR of my rascally sisters were located at all times! Woe betide me if my parents casually strolled into the event and I couldn’t immediately account for the whereabouts of all my sisters! In fact, I can still remember the only ONE party I ever attended by myself (because I told my mum my friend from school Kariba said ONLY her classmates could come, Lol). I’ll never forget, it was Kariba’s cousin Kaine’s birthday at a restaurant and I ate a whole large snail by myself. I love snails. It was heaven.

Lol.

Ossy is an adult now, but thankfully she still needs me. When she cries, she rings me and I am able to say words that for now still make sense to her youthful mind. She teases me about being too old to know what’s on trend, gangs up with my husband to mock me :o), regales me with photos of BobRisky’s daily antics because she knows it’s sure to make me laugh, and from the first, she has accepted EVERYONE who ever indicated they love me with no inhibitions. Which explains why she is the closest of all my family to my husband. On her birthday last week, I told her that I’m proud of her not even because I’ve watched with something akin to awe as she has dedicatedly turned academic failures to roaring successes (including a recent First Class Bachelor’s degree in Business & Information Technology y’all!), I’m proud of her simply for who she is. Wracked with insecurities and self-doubt like all of us, she is still able to continuously show kindness to others, to remain intrinsically good in a world full of selfishness and hate.

Once Obi’m told me I’m very blessed, because according to him, my family is made of “Good people.” GOOD. It’s not a trait the world likes but it’s such a powerful attribute. A good person is able to see the good in others, is willing to take a chance on someone else, to give the benefit of doubt time and time again. And that takes courage. Goodness requires a strong sense of self, a refusal to hide behind fear of vulnerability and leap at life with a sort of practical optimism. Ossy is a good person. And I am incredibly, infinitely proud to be a part of her spirit. I told her on her birthday how proud I am of not only her many achievements and how hard she has worked to achieve dreams but that I am far far more proud, more amazed and excited by her natural, inner kindness, the way she opens her heart to others without judgment, her willingness to help everyone and just how she always manages to find the little things in life that bring comedy. I told her , “My darling, keep being you and don’t worry about this world trying so hard to change you or tell you you have to be this or that to be beautiful. You are enough. You are amazing. There is a love that is designed perfectly for you, keep putting your best into the world and your love will find you.”

I love you always and always, my Oz, and I will always be here for you, my big little sister. You are and will always be my first baby.

Ossy.